On Sunday, February 5, 2017 at 12:14:27 PM UTC+1, telmo_menezes wrote: > > > > Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe > > and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in > > Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was > > also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the > > dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and > > reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the > > opposition. > > > > > > They also don't use words to obfuscate meaning. > > I don't think any of us is doing that. We are debating definitions, > which is arguably 90% of philosophy. > > > > Then why do people feel the need to crate the word "agnostic"? > > > > > > I think it's a cop out to avoid the question of whether the God of > theism > > exists. Agnostics were originally people who were not just uncertain > about > > God, they held that the question was impossible to know anything about, > > a-gnostic. So it was not a "nuanced" position - epistemologically is > was > > an extreme position and so deserved a name. > > Yes, I tend to agree with this epistemological extreme, because I > think it is a necessary implication of Gödel's theorems. > > This assumes that Gödel's theorems (which one and how?) force a general epistemological extreme concerning knowledge that reads as though Gödel's theorems should force people into strong forms of agnosticism. "We don't know" in some unclear general philosophical sense involving the beliefs and positions of other folks in real life IS NOT a necessary implication of Gödel's theorems. Even assuming it were such a necessary implication: how could one even posit formal arithmetic to assume we are universal machines to get to Gödel in the first place? You have to assume that people are machines, Church Thesis etc. with Gödel.
What is implied by discussing philosophy in a general sense is not subject to formal rules of inference. Folks run into danger of confusing the results of formal rules of inference (and the precise systems to which they apply in their bounded study of arithmetic say), with much broader ideas that are much less clear. What is philosophically implied by a scientific theory is NOT determined exclusively by its internal rules, derivations, proofs etc.; it is just as much a matter of interpretation, opinion, argument, language and personal beliefs limited only by vast boundaries of the mind as with thought in general. When I read "convert" in your original post, it exposes a mindset that can appear to confuse the clarity of formal systems and their results with reality. Or worse, a mindset that exploits the universal presence of some terms, e.g. incompleteness, system, reasoning etc. to opportunistically frame discourse to advance the successful appearance of some assumed authority or narrative. Real potential for misleading obfuscation here. I wonder where all the humility and agnosticism went? Such lack of clarity should be avoided, if we're not just kidding around and if we're kidding around, I missed the punch line or the beauty of the thing, in which case the apologies are mine. PGC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
